1
Q
What is the scientific method?
A
A formalized way of knowing about the natural world
It includes systematic observation, experimentation, and the formulation of questions and hypotheses.
2
Q
What research question did Murray et al. (2009) investigate?
A
Do pregnant and lactating chimpanzees alter their feeding behaviour to compensate for increased energy demands of reproduction?
This question focuses on the dietary adjustments of chimpanzees during reproductive phases.
3
Q
What is the hypothesis regarding the diet of pregnant and lactating females?
A
Pregnant and lactating females will consume a diet that provides higher caloric intake than nonpregnant, nonlactating females.
4
Q
What is the first step in the scientific method?
A
Formulate the research question based on a careful review of the literature.
5
Q
What is meant by ‘controls’ in an experiment?
A
Controls are carefully designed elements that help ensure the experiment’s validity by eliminating confounding variables.
6
Q
What must be obtained before conducting a study?
A
Ethics approval for the study.
7
Q
What is random sampling?
A
A method of collecting data that ensures every individual has an equal chance of being selected.
8
Q
What is the purpose of analyzing data in research?
A
To formulate interpretations using appropriate statistical tools.
9
Q
What is the peer review process?
A
A method of evaluating scientific work by other experts in the field before publication.
10
Q
What is the role of replication in scientific research?
A
To verify results by repeating the study to see if the same findings occur.
11
Q
What types of literature are involved in advancing knowledge in research?
A
- Primary Literature
- Secondary Literature
12
Q
What are the three methods for studying behavior in animals?
A
- Observational
- Experimental
- Comparative
13
Q
What is the independent variable in an experiment?
A
The variable that is changed by the researcher.
14
Q
What is the dependent variable in an experiment?
A
The variable measured in response to change in the independent variable.
15
Q
What is a control group?
A
A group that does not experience manipulation in an experiment.
16
Q
What are the three categories for classifying adult female chimpanzees in the study?
A
- Pregnant
- Lactating
- Nonpregnant and nonlactating
17
Q
What conclusion was drawn about female chimpanzees’ diets during pregnancy and lactation?
A
Female chimpanzees alter their diet to include more high-calorie fruit to increase caloric intake.
18
Q
What are the challenges associated with observational studies?
A
- Reactivity
- External validity
19
Q
What does the ‘Replacement’ principle in the Three R’s refer to?
A
Encouraging the use of computer modeling or other non-animal approaches in research.
20
Q
What does the ‘Reduction’ principle in the Three R’s promote?
A
Limiting the number of animals subject to disturbance in research or teaching.
21
Q
What does the ‘Refinement’ principle in the Three R’s involve?
A
Improving procedures and techniques to minimize pain and stress for animals.
22
Q
Where is an observation observed?
A
Observed in a home, lab or in field
23
Q
What does ‘in field’ mean?
A
natural habitat of animal
24
Q
What is a paradigm?
A
experimental setup, way to conduct an experiment
25
When is there a specific paradigm for how to conduct research present?
When a specific topic has been researched so much.
26
What is random sampling?
randomly selecting individuals to represent a larger population
27
What is random assignment?
Assign individuals to random conditions.
28
What is primary literature?
First people who conducted experiment are the same people writing about it.
29
What is secondary literature?
Someone else interpreting or summarizing research.
30
What is the Peer Review Process?
An expert in field of research, and evaluate quality of paper
31
What is the name of the classification system ranging from Life to Species?
Linnean Classification System
32
What does sister species mean?
Fair bit of relatedness between species
33
What is a confounding variable?
Other variable resulting in data affecting results, and is not part of the original experiment
34
Why is ethics approval mandatory before any experiment?
Science has a history of causing harm to animals
35
What is reactivity?
Being so obvious in the natural environment that the animals pay attention to you instead of their natural environment.
36
What is external validity?
When findings can be generalized to other situations and individuals.
37
What is an important factor in determining who gets access to the thermal baths?
Aggression - a high aggressive animal (usually male) gives access to individuals
38
What is a thermal bath?
Hot water bath for Japanese macaques, needed to survive, only high members of group allowed in
39
What is evolution?
Change.
40
What are anthropomorphic explanations?
Explanations of animal behaviour which assign human emotions to animals and can be difficult to test.
41
Why do zoos have lots of partners?
They generate lots of money.
42
Where do a lot of zoo animals come from?
Dangerous natural habitats - lots of human tension of hunting
43
Ectotherms
As external health rises, they move to shady areas for internal regulation
44
Why are there paintings of animals on cave walls?
To present realistic depictions of animals, because were needed for survival back in day
45
What do most pet owners value their pets for?
Companionship
46
What are the ways people manage animal behaviour to accomplish a task?
- integral in medicine - helps researchers assess and learn about bodily functions
47
What do animal behaviour researchers do?
Animal behaviour researchers use scientific method to understand behaviours we observe.
48
What is behaviour?
Any internally coordinated, externally visible pattern of activity that responds to changing external or internal conditions.
49
What does internally coordinated mean?
Internal information processing
50
What are examples of internal coordination in animals?
1) Aggressive encounters among male giraffes due to changes in hormones
2) Caterpillar eating due to sensory processing allowing for finding location of food such as leaves
51
What does externally visible mean?
Observe and measure
52
What is the external visible behaviour in giraffes and caterpillar?
Giraffes - easy to observe aggressive giraffes, can measure number of aggressive encounters
Caterpillars - can measure amount of food caterpillar eats by amount of leaf left
53
What are the behavioural responses to changing conditions?
Giraffes - less aggressive in non mating season - low testosterone
Caterpillar - depletion of internal resources this the need for food
54
What is an ethogram?
Documentation of behaviours we are interested in
55
What is Time Budget?
Frequency and Time
56
What is frequency?
How many times we observe specific behaviour?
57
What is time?
How long the animal is engaging in said behaviour
58
How should a metholody be described?
With minutes, day, how many times a week, number of months
59
What is an instantaneous scan sample?
A method used in behavioural research to collect data by observing a group of individuals at pre-determined intervals and recording their behaviour at that exact moment.
60
Does a researcher citing someone else, explaining an established paradigm add to credibility?
Yes
61
What is stereotyping?
Repetitive behaviour with no obvious purpose: weaving, head bobbing, pacing backward and forward or in an arc, walking in circles - means animal is in stress
62
What were the results of the elephant ethogram?
- elephants spent 1/4 of their time feeding
- stereotypic behaviour negatively correlated with feeding behaviour
63
What was the conclusion of the elephant ethogram?
Using widely spaced feeders to supply food slowly and at random times could reduce the frequency of stereotypic behaviour.
- With high feeding behaviour, less stereotyping (means less stress)
- Cant do action with meaning (feeding) at same time as no meaning behaviour (stereotypic)
64
What is rate?
the frequency of the behaviour per unit time
65
What is intensity?
The vigor or forcefullness of the behaviour
66
What does a time budget indicate?
The total time and relative frequency of each behaviour.
67
What is the process of science?
Involves observing events, organizing knowledge, and providing testable explanations.
68
What do researches strive to understand in the natural sciences?
The natural world
69
What does research involve?
Discovering, reevaluating, and interpreting the evidence.
70
What is a research hypothesis?
An explanation that is based on assumptions and produces a testable prediction.
71
What is a research question?
A brief statement of something that we would like to understand.
72
What is an alternate hypothesis?
The statistical hypothesis that the proposed explanation for an observation does significantly affect the behaviour of the organism.
73
What do you do when you fail to reject the null hypothesis?
You need to develop a new research hypothesis to explain the original observation.
74
What are negative results?
An outcome in which the null hypothesis is not rejected, and this the alternate hypothesis is rejected.
75
What is a directional hypothesis?
Predicts specifically how the variable under examination will affect a particular behaviour - positively or negatively
76
What is a non directional hypothesis?
Offers no specific prediction of how the variable will affect the behaviour.
77
What is a correlation?
Two variables that vary together predictably
78
scientific theory
hypotheses that have been tested many times, by many different scientists, and have not been rejected. Scientific theories provide a conceptual framework that explains many phenomena and are well supported by observations and experimental tests
79
What two ways do psychologists study human behaviour?
direct and indirect
80
Why do psychologists study animal behaviour?
psychological research on the evolution of human behaviour often involves the study of our closest relatives
81
What are Tinbergen's four questions?
1) What is the mechanism that causes the behaviour?
2) How does the behaviour develop?
3) How does the behaviour affect survival and reproduction
4) How did the behaviour evolve?
82
What are the answers to Tinbergen's Q1 and Q2 referred to as and why?
Proximate explanations - bc focus on underlying mechanisms of a behaviour such as physiological, genetic, neursensory, and cognitive mechanisms, including learning - focuses on current behaviour
83
What are the answers to Tinbergen's Q3 and Q4 referred to as and why?
ultimate explanations - bc require evolutionary reasoning and analysis - focuses on development/history
84
What was the lasting effect of Tinbergen;s work?
Emphasis on proximate and ultimate explanations being complementary.
85
What did Darwin hypothesis as to why female cuckoos lay their eggs in other species nests?
Selection would favour an individual that laid her eggs in the nests of others, so female isn't incubated with a clutch of chicks of different ages - would be costly to female and chicks.
86
What does Darwin's research represent?
the beginning of the evolutionary basis of animal behaviour research
87
What did animals display, according to Romanes?
A mind, or conscious actions rather than mere reflex reactions - they learned from previous mistakes
88
What did Romanes' "mental tree" describe?
Which animals display higher stages of cognitive development
89
What is Morgan's canon?
The idea that the simplest psychological process possible should be used to interpret an animal's behaviour.
90
What did Morgan want to emphasis?
The need for a more scientific approach to the study of the mental evolution of animals.
91
Who were the three notable comparative psychologists?
Charles Turner, Margaret Floy Washburn and Edward L. Thorndike
92
What did Thorndike pioneer and what was he best known for?
The use of standardized methodology and the experimental method in study of animal learning, "puzzle boxes"
93
What did Turner do?
Developed novel experimental approaches using elaborate apparatuses to study insect learning
94
What did Washburn do?
Extensive research on the motor theory of consciousness and wrote textbook that emphasize the experimental method for comparative psychology
95
What is behaviourism?
A field of comparative psychology that studies behaviour independently of animal mental states or consciousness
96
Who were two most influential behaviourists?
Ivan Pavlov and B.F Skinner
97
What is classical or pavlovian conditioning?
When a novel stimulusis paired with an existing stimulus and elicits a particular response, eventually novel stimulus alone elicits same response
98
What is an operant chamber?
An enclosure used to study behavioural conditioning.
99
What is a Skinner box?
Same as operant chamber.
100
What is operant conditioning?
When an animal learns to associate a behaviour with a particular consequence.
101
What did classical ethologists study?
The behaviour of wild animals in nature by observation and experimentation
102
Who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine and why?
Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Niko Tinbergen - for discoveries about organization of individual and social behaviour patterns
103
What did Von Frisch study?
honeybee sensory perception and communication, "waggle dance"
104
What did Lorenz study?
instinctive behaviour in birds
105
What did Tinbergen study?
instinct - behaviours that are under strong genetic control
106
How does the work of evolutionary psychologists and cognitive ethologists differ?
EP - seek to understand human thinking and behaviour
CE - focus on understanding the behaviour of animals and often integrate info from neuroscience
107
What else does CE seek to understand?
how natural selection has acted on mental processes and cognition in order to better understand the behaviour of animals
108
What does behavioural ecology study?
focuses on the evolution of behaviour by studying its function, focus on understanding the adaptive value of behaviour, helps understand how natural selection has molded behaviour
109
What type of questions do classical ethologists and behavioural ecologists focus on?
CE - proximate questions
BE - ultimate explanations of behaviour
110
What can research questions be based on?
Earlier observations, previous knowledge, prior research, a theory of some combination of these
111
What was done in the frog eating bat experiment?
speakers played both complex and simple calls of frogs to see if complex call attracts more frogs.
112
What did the frog eating bat experiment show?
A lot more frog eating bats came to the speaker playing the more complex call - providing support for hypothesis of complex call is more costly to produce, even though attracts more females.
113
What factor do researchers often consider when constructing an hypothesis?
Considering how natural selection might have acted on the behaviour to produce a behavioural adaptation
114
What is a benefit of a mathematical model?
Allow scientists to easily manipulate their assumptions to produce new predictions about behaviour.
115
What is handling time?
The amount of time required to manipulate a food item so that it is ready to eat.
116
What did the squirrel experiment show?
Squirrels carried the largest item most commonly, rarely carried the smallest item, for any sized food, as the distance to the tree increases the squirrels carried fewer items to the tree
117
What was done in the squirrel experiment?
Researchers tested in park in NY, made food patches with access to pieces of cookies, changed cookie size and distance to tree every single day
118
What were the two predictions in squirrel experiment's model?
1) the larger food item, the more often it should be carried to a tree
2) as distance between food patch and tree increases, individuals should carry a smaller proportion of food
119
Did the squirrel model work for all species?
No
120
What is the observational method?
An approach in which scientists observe and record the behaviour of an organism without manipulating the environment or the animal.
121
What was done in the male bighorn sheep study?
Sheep were observed in pre-rut and rutting season to see how male mating tactics affect the time they could spend foraging.
122
How was the male bighorn sheep study done?
Sheep were observed pre-rut and during rutting season in a Canadian park. Observed time when individual focal animals changed from one behaviour to another in 3-6 hour focal observation periods per day.
123
What did the male bighorn sheep study show?
Great variety of time spent foraging fro each male, adult males spent less time foraging during rutting season than pre-rut, but no big difference in time spent foraging by males when tending or coursing during the rut.
124
What was the hypothesis of the male bighorn sheep hypothesis?
Tending males would forage less than coursing males
125
What is the experimental method?
An approach in which scientists manipulate or change a variable to examine how it affects the behaviour of an animal.
126
What is the comparative method?
An approach that examines differences and similarities between species to understand the evolution of behavioural traits.
127
What is a derived trait?
AKA apomorphic trait, is found in a more recently evolved species and was not present in the last common ancestor of a group of two or more species.
128
What is an ancestral trait?
A trait found in the common ancestor of two or more species. Also called a plesiomorphic trait.
129
what is a phylogeny?
A branching diagram showing hypothesized evolutionary relationships among organisms
130
What are sister-species?
Two species that are more closely related to one another than to any other species; species that share a recent common ancestor.
131
What is scientific misconduct?
The violation of ethical behaviour standards in science. It includes the falsification or fabrication of data, purposefully inappropriate analysis of data, and plagiarism.
132
How can research on animals have a negative impact on them?
From simple observations of wild animals, inappropriate housing of animals in laboratories, and the various procedures performed.
133
How can observing animals cause them harm?
Can desensitize animals to humans and increase their predation from poachers or hunters.
134
How can manipulations to animals' environment cause them harm?
Giving them food can result in increased population leading to overcrowding and increased stress.
135
How can behavioural research involving more direct contact with animals cause harm?
can cause stress from captivity, require additional considerations (appropriate housing and husbandry, how the animal will be procured), some will die in process
136
What is required before conducting research on animals, that is funded by US federal funding?
An animal care protocol to the committee.
137
What is scientific literacy?
The ability to evaluate scientific information critically and ascertain its validity.
138
What are some things peer reviewers check?
importance of research question, validity of hypothesis, and everything else, if written concise and clear, scrutinize manuscript for accuracy, can also reject if any part is incorrect, faulty or illogical
139
LifeSci 2D03
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